- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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Well, user traffic has returned to normal, but we also have to consider that it’s just traffic. Some of that traffic is also a bunch of people talking about Reddit, protesting, etc.
That being said, I don’t think Reddit will die from this, but it doesn’t need to in order for the Fediverse to succeed. All it needs is to push enough people onto federated services and kickstart it, just like Twitter did with Mastodon. We aren’t going to all switch overnight, it will be a gradual process.
My own reddit traffic has dropped right off since I discovered Lemmy. For now this place has the feel of the early internet: democratic, distributed and friendly. It really makes clear how repugnant Reddit has become.
I hate that I’m still adding to Reddit traffic but every once and a while I still do (search item) + Reddit because it’s still better than just googling something and getting 100 terrible SEO articles about a topic.
For example. I wanted to look for DIY dog toys. I got hundreds of results with crappy clickbait, and ridden websites. Did +Reddit and got some great results.
Once I can do +Lemmy and get decent results my traffic will fall hard… I guess I gotta be part of that change, offering threads of my own with information I know. But it just seems homeless some days.
Am I the only one who thinks that having only a 7% dip in visits and a 16% reduction in time spent on site is really unusual when over 99% of the site was dark for 48 hours? To me, that suggests that something fucky is going on with the count of real users vs bots on the site.
I’ll be real with you, both of those things are huge for a company as large as reddit. They will obsess over user features that increase attention by just one or two percent. So losing that much traffic is a red alert.
They also will have tracking for number of posts and comments deleted, number of subscriptions lost, users banned, etc. All of those numbers will look awful.
In fact, karma is a really good indicator of what they lose. If you take karma, divide by time since account creation, then you have an excellent measure of engagement with communities. They can see how much karma is being lost. That’s why they’re afraid.
I’m going to continue using rif until it shuts down at the end of the month but there’s no way I’m downloading their shitty app. I have a feeling a lot of people are in the same boat.
Indeed
I think that it’s important to note the 1% rule.
Most of the traffic of any given platform will be created by people who interact with it only passively; they mostly lurk and, for good or bad, they don’t care about it. Admins this, mods that, who the fuck cares, my cat pics sprout spontaneously from the internet.
In the meantime the people who actually contribute with the platform will be a tiny fraction of it. They don’t add traffic, but they add value - because they’re the ones responsible for creating the content (posting), aggregating value to the content (commenting), sorting the content (voting and moderating). The admins’ decisions and the mod revolts affected specially bad this group. And… well, not even the stupid like to be called stupid, and that’s basically what the admins did.
Now consider the link. The lurkers are back to Reddit because there’s still content to be consumed there, but eventually it’ll run dry - because the contributors are leaving the site. As such, you don’t expect the mod revolts to have a short-term impact on the site, but rather a long-term one: the site will become less and less popular over time, as the lurkers are looking for content there and… well, nobody is providing them jack shit. Eventually the site will be forgotten by the masses, just like Digg was.
So Reddit will die, mind you. But it won’t be a sudden death; it’ll be a slow bleeding.
I just wish that this process was slightly faster, specially before the IPO.
Hey, the repost bots will still be there :-D !
This lurker won’t (trying to not lurk here). I am happy to get away from there, enough content (and better quality) is here.
Thank you! (We need more content. Specially about other stuff than Reddit.)
That reminds me a caveat of the reasoning above: the “lurker” and “contributor” aren’t different people, but different interactions with a platform. Someone might be a lurker in one platform but a contributor, for example. The conclusion is still the same though, people avoid contributing to platforms that they feel to be hostile towards them.
The content will stay, at least in terms of posts. If the value-adders go to other sites, someone will just repost that value back to reddit.
It’ll devolve into something like instagram, where it’s literally impossible to discuss anything in the comments. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean they stop making money.
The content will stay, at least in terms of posts.
Content loses relevance over time, and becomes increasingly harder to retrieve as noise piles up: pointless threads, re-re-re-reposts, “marketing opportunities” (i.e. spam), so goes on. Reddit Inc.'s actions pissed off specially bad the people who were removing that noise - moderators.
someone will just repost that value back to reddit.
Usually you’d have the contributors doing this; the lurkers don’t care about sharing. But even if someone/something (AI) consistently keeps posting stuff from other platforms back into Reddit, those newer posts will be further removed from the original source, and they’ll arrive later. Reddit stops being the “front face of the internet” to become “yet another bottom feeder of the internet”.
where it’s literally impossible to discuss anything in the comments. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean they stop making money.
In Reddit’s case, I think that it does. Reddit might’ve started as a link aggregator, but its main value was as a forum platform. Without the ability to discuss anything deeper than “two plus two equals GOOD! EDIT WOW THANKS FOR THE GOLD, KIND STRANGER!@!11ONE”, it’s just yet another link aggregator again.
I agree and those reasons you listed are why I don’t have any issue parting ways with this platform, but I don’t think the general public does. People do use instagram and tiktok to view what I (and I’m guessing you do too) consider noise.
And after all, the general public is who views the ads on their site and brings in the money.
As someone who spends time curating the content I view without any care given to what other people enjoy, I’m often shocked at how terrible the content on something like youtube’s front page is when I get logged out. It’s easy to forget that a lot of people just don’t care and use the internet to turn off their brain.
You’re right that noise is subjective (it might be noise for one, content for another), but it’s only partially so. Most people don’t like old, repetitive or misplaced content; they don’t like spam either, so those things are almost always noise. And yet I think that they’ll become more and more common there over time.
You mentioned TikTok and Instagram; that’s less about noise vs. content and more about high quality vs. low quality. Plenty people have low standards, but even those prefer quality stuff; so once content quality drops down (I’m predicting that it will), they’ll have less reasons to look for content in Reddit instead of elsewhere.
Also, note that 47.58% of the traffic of the site is generated by “organic search”. Once creators are gone, those 47.58% are going away, too. They won’t be googling stuff like “how to shoot web site:reddit.com” if they know that Reddit will provide mostly junk results.
eventually it’ll run dry - because the contributors are leaving the site
I somewhat disagree… you haven’t considered the increased incentive for occasional posters to become more regular contributors as existing contributors leave.
As the volume of contributions reduces, each contribution is more likely to garner engagement - those sweet sweet endorphins released when someone upvotes or otherwise engages with your post.
Even if it does, it doesn’t really matter if Reddit can become profitable.
It doesn’t really matter what we think but what the shitty capitalists bearing down on Reddit think. They clearly pushed for it to move into crypto and NFTs and I wouldn’t doubt if they push it to chase the next hype of AI. I wouldn’t doubt if the restrictions in the API are AI related and Reddit has lots of archived comments and posts to draw from.
deleted by creator
I’m not surprised, but you can’t forget that a lot of people on reddit don’t really post or comment a lot. I myself was one of them, I’m way more active here than I ever was on reddit though.
That’s fine. I’m sure the passive masses will show back up.
The real problem is content creators and such are or have already left. And well, I’m here, as are all of you!
Passive consumers are a massive force, and will go where the wind blows. But they actively do little. And, about them… Who cares?
I don’t think the content creators really left significantly, but the sentiment to users has certainly changed. This was never going to kill reddit, and was never gonna be a long term problem for them - for that the former mod and activist for r/jailbait was correct. But it creates negative user sentiment, which will make it easier to move people, or even make people just less excited to use the platform in the long term.
I don’t think this applies to just people who support the protest either. People who just wanted to see their content and got mad at mods for shutting down subs now have more negative sentiment to the moderators and the users who may or may not support the protests.
This is a W in my books, as I never liked corporate ownership of people having conversations, which is expressly Reddit’s sole product. Maybe a few hundred people will use the site less this week than last. Maybe an additional few hundred come the API changes, but the next controversy Reddit has will move more. And it’ll snowball, just like Twitter’s seen, and the content will change to reflect the worst who decide to stay and support reddit through it all.
But it creates negative user sentiment, which will make it easier to move people, or even make people just less excited to use the platform in the long term.
To add, it’s not nothing that lemmy and kbin have grown as much as they have. This has introduced many to the concept of the fediverse at all, or at least to those two names, and they’re more likely to switch after they’ve heard about it a couple times, or after it grows a bit more, or once reddit pisses them off even by just some toxic mod doing dumb shit and making them say “fuck this site, I’m going to that alternative I heard about.”
I guess what I’m getting at is this is effective marketing even if we don’t make the sale today. Like Hank during Grillstraveganza, you provide quality information and let the customer make up their own mind, and your sales will come in at the end of the month. We don’t need all those fancy Jo-Jack tricks to make an immediate sale, we can bide our time like Hank.
Not completely normal. I deleted my account that was old enough to sign up for most websites on its own. I’m not the only one.
Haven’t deleted either of both of my 14 yr accounts yet, but I haven’t been on Reddit since the blackout and have plans to nuke it all after I navigate new subscriptions and think it through.
FWIW, I find the experience a refreshing re-start, just like when Digg and Slashdot fucked up and I’m already seeing shit posting, memes, and fresh content galore on Lemmy in just the last week. I doubt I’ll go back to Reddit except for some esoteric solutions that I find in searches.
Also deleted the 3 accounts I had - it’s most like a paid ad. People need to stop giving two shits about Reddit, it’s a corporation that doesn’t care about its users yet a bunch of its users, even former ones, seem to overly care about it.
I am not sure I believe that, it might be that bots can be active again now that the subreddits are reopened, but I know that I am not back. And I won’t be back, and I think a lot of people are staying away as well. That the traffic is now normal seems a bit sketchy.
This article will age poorly in a week. And like milk in about a month.
I don’t think so. Most people really are normies and don’t care. If there’s any change it will happen slowly as Reddit’s content and culture go to shit.
Pretty much, yeah.
Speaking of which, has /r/agedlikemilk come to Lemmy?
Ticktock… The 1st of July is almost here.
I deleted everything and I’ve not been on for weeks now. Good riddance!
I’m not really surprised, I’d actually assume that sexy John Oliver and the other protests created a lot of additional traffic. People post like crazy and a lot of people want to see that, especially since it got some coverage on news sites. Add to that the big majority of people who do not care (remember that 80% of traffic was still reached) plus some who may have been sympathetic enough to join the two day protest but don’t care enough to continue to stay away. It’s really not surprising that we’re back to normal numbers.
Thankfully this isn’t the only impact people currently still make, so this isn’t over. The real question now will be how else it might change Reddit.
Protesting Reddit by posting entertaining content to Reddit makes as much sense as protesting Bud Lite by buying lots of it to destroy in a high-profile stunt.
maybe i’ll use the web version for some time, not gonna use their app for sure
I’m pretty sure i’m gone
Did anybody seriously expect anything different?
This site is the real difference. Lemmy had 0 activity until now. Now that there’s a footing, there’s a real chance of continued growth.
From Lemmy perspective there’s been a huge influx of new users, but from Reddit perspective nothing changed. I do expect Lemmy to keep growing, but I don’t expect that it’s going to have any measurable impact on Reddit in the foreseeable future.
There may be some impact, come July, when the third party apps stop working. However, I have to imagine that the vast majority of mobile users use the official app. Quality may take a hit, with the loss of some mods and mod tools, but Reddit will be just fine. Sadly, Reddit rates too highly on content, users, and resultant utility (for many communities) for most users to completely abandon it.
Reddit rates too highly on content
But who provides the content? Power users. Reddit follows the same curve as most social media where only like 1-5% of the users actually post the content, and the rest are consumers. When the content creators are gone, it’s just a platform with no content.
The only people who will stick to submitting content are the poor content reposters or various spammers, which the mods have been doing free labor to filter out. Heck, even the bots using the API will die too, so all you’ll have is the TOS-breaking bots posting content.
This will not end well when third party apps are gone. I didn’t realize it myself, but most of my time is reading Reddit when I’m bored in bed, or on the train, on my phone. I’ve been a redditor for 17 years, and my time now has mostly shifted from my desktop to the “RIF” Android app, and without that, I’m simply not using Reddit, and have already uninstalled.
Yeah I find myself missing reddit when I’m bored too, I don’t miss the ‘community’ at all. I much prefer here for that
Honestly this will probably be a good exercise for me to reduce my screen time, try to be more present, and try to be content with just being
Like circa 2007/8, Reddit was a community, and it was pretty great. I was friends with a big group of
r/Chicagopeople, and we organized several awesome meetups. I still talk to some of them, and 2 of them even got married!But then AMAs got Reddit national attention when celebrities started participating, things really blew up. Everyone came for
r/AMA, but they stayed forr/funnyandr/pics. Comment counts went from 20 to 100 top per post, to 100s or 1000s for all posts. Comment quality went from multi-paragraph, forum-like, insightful discussions that followed “Reddiquette”, to one line joke comments and downvotes for disagreements (whereas downvotes prior were only used to bury inaccurate/hostile comments instead). And then Reddit slowly turned into a boredom filler instead of a community site, where you just scroll to pass the time.Yeah I joined in… 2013? When AMAs were already a thing, and like you said became a place for the same jokes and downvotes for innocuous comments. That’s why I lurked for several years before commenting at all - and even then I got made fun of (and downvotes) for not getting a ‘magnets, how do they even work?’ meme
There were a few niche subreddits that I visited a lot and had actual good discussions / got to know people, but yeah it was otherwise just another place to consume content when bored
I wonder if there are metrics anywhere about percentage of mobile users using the official app vs 3rd party apps. I’d be interested to see the breakdown.
Right, I expect most people will grumble but then just use the official app. You’re completely right that the network effects make it difficult for people to move to a different platform, and that outweighs the inconvenience of using the official app.
Well I’m just loading up Lemmy for the first time today and this seems like a fine replacement — even more so than mastodon was for Twitter.
